Nurses are being flown in from Nepal to work in the NHS despite a global ban on employing healthcare workers from the country because of its own staff shortages.

The state we’re in – Owl

Eleanor Hayward www.thetimes.co.uk

The Department of Health yesterday [Monday] signed a deal with the Nepalese government to recruit staff for the NHS, agreeing to pay for their air tickets, visas and registration fees.

About 100 nurses are due to work at Hampshire Hospital NHS Foundation Trust under a pilot scheme running until the end of next year.

The UK has agreed to recognise Nepal’s nursing qualifications, saying these will automatically provide the right to work in the NHS. The bilateral agreement could pave the way for thousands more Nepalese nurses to join the health service.

Nepalese officials said all nurses aged 20 to 45 were eligible to apply for the scheme, adding they would not have to pay any fees and would get a salary of £27,000 to £32,000.

It is part of an international recruitment drive to address a shortage of 50,000 nurses and midwives.

Nepal is on a recruitment “red list”, drawn up by the World Health Organisation to prevent unethical recruitment from countries with shortages of health workers. Nepal has a health worker to population ratio of 0.67 doctors and nurses per 1,000. The WHO recommends 2.3 per 1,000.

A “memorandum of understanding” signed by Britain and Nepal gets around the red-list recruitment restrictions as it is a direct agreement between the two countries. The deal, the first on labour supply between Britain and Nepal, comes amid concerns over the NHS’s overreliance on foreign nurses. Almost half of the 48,436 people who joined the nursing and midwifery workforce in the past year were from overseas, mostly from India and the Philippines.

Pat Cullen, chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing, said: “Ministers must stop the overreliance on overseas staff and do more to invest in the recruitment and retention of the domestic workforce. This starts with pay. Nursing staff have endured a decade of real terms pay cuts.”

The Department of Health said: “Internationally trained staff have been part of the NHS since its inception in 1948 and continue to play a vital role.”

The Conservatives have long held business days at their conference but the price tags have risen sharply since they started charging about £1,000 a head under David Cameron.

Tories offer access to new chancellor for £3,000

Rowena Mason www.theguardian.com

The Tories are selling access to the new chancellor and senior ministers ​at almost £3,000 a ticket for corporate leaders and lobbyists at their autumn conference, saying it will help firms “take your business to the next level”.

The party is advertising spaces for its “prestigious” annual business day at £2,990 a head, saying it will give attenders the chance to interact with “key decision makers in the party”.

The day involves roundtables with senior party figures, a lunch with ministers and then ends with a dinner addressed by the new chancellor, who is expected to be Kwasi Kwarteng if Liz Truss wins the Tory leadership. The dinner alone costs £400 a head to attend.

“This is your chance to hear from the Conservative party’s core team, put your questions directly to key decision makers in the party and network with other business leaders,” the party’s marketing material says.

Alongside the business day, the Tories are also selling companies the chance to exhibit at the party conference in Birmingham, which costs more than £51,000 for the biggest stands. Firms that go for that option are promised “ministerial visits from senior members of the cabinet”.

The party boasts that attending the conference gives businesses a “reach to thousands of party members, influential businesses, the senior Conservative team and more – both in-person in Birmingham, and globally online”.

The Conservatives have long held business days at their conference but the price tags have risen sharply since they started charging about £1,000 a head under David Cameron.

However, the price of the event and promise of access to ministers may reignite concerns about cash for access and ethical standards, which have arisen during the leadership of Boris Johnson.

Steve Goodrich, head of research and investigations at Transparency International UK, said: “Soliciting money for face time with senior government figures reinforces public concerns that cash buys privileged access and influence in our democracy.

“The way these top-tier stands are advertised as buying time with ministers may give rise to the perception that you must pay to be heard in politics. For individuals and businesses struggling with the rising cost of living, this could signal their voice is not worth being listened to.”

A Conservative spokesperson said: “This event is an important opportunity to engage directly with businesses and to highlight how we continue to back business and enterprise as we build back from the pandemic and tackle the economic challenges ahead. All political parties hold business events at their conferences, and we have been holding such events at our conference for decades.”

The concerns over access could be exacerbated by Truss’s plans to ditch ethical oversight for ministers by abolishing the post of independent adviser on ministerial interests.

After being pressed on the subject of a new ethics adviser multiple times at a hustings on Tuesday, Truss said: “I do think one of the problems we have got in this country in the way we approach things is we have numerous advisers and independent bodies, and rules and regulations.

“For me it’s about understanding the difference between right and wrong, and I am somebody who has always acted with integrity […] and that is what I would do as prime minister.”

Chris Bryant, the chair of the committee on standards and a Labour MP, said he feared Truss was setting herself up as “Boris Johnson mark two” on standards and ethics.

He said the credibility of ethical oversight in politics “is already hanging by a pretty thin thread as we have seen over the past few years and it feels like she wants to cut that final thread”.

“This would take us back to a time before cash for questions. If she wants to rewrite this story as a rerun of the 1990s, we know where that ends,” Bryant said.

“Essential” storm repair work costing £200,000 will take place at a Devon seaside resort this autumn.

www.bbc.co.uk

The work will begin in September and is expected to end at the start of November – EDDC

The work in Sidmouth will repair the seawall and a ramp which has faced years of storm damage.

It will begin in September and is expected to end at the start of November.

The Millennium Walkway and Undercliff path will close and as the work progresses the closure will move eastwards towards Sidmouth.

East Devon District Council said: “The seawall and ramp have taken many years of storm damage and requires a new concrete face and replacement ramp to ensure the structures are safe and functional into the future.

“Due to repeated storm damage upgrading to some of the railing to a solid wall will take place.

“These works are essential, and we have timed them to avoid the best part of the year for residents and holidaymakers.

“However this needs to be done before the winter storms.”

Analysis of Water UK data from 2021 by the Angling Trust has found that on average, water companies replace 0.05% of their pipe networks a year.

European averages show that most European countries replace their pipes at about 0.5% a year.

Helena Horton www.theguardian.com 

It would take English water companies 2,000 years to replace their pipes at current rates, leaked data reveals.

Analysis of Water UK data from 2021 by the Angling Trust has found that on average, water companies replace 0.05% of their pipe networks a year.

Southern Water and Severn Trent are the slowest performers, with each having an average replacement rate of 0.03% of their pipe network a year. Northumbrian and South West Water top the leaderboard, each replacing about 0.2% of their network each year.

European averages show that most European countries replace their pipes at about 0.5% a year, giving each pipe an expected life of approximately 200 years. Modern PVC pipes can last between 50 and 100 years depending on ground conditions and other factors.

England’s crumbling pipe network is one of the causes of the vast volumes of water leaked each year, exacerbating droughts and leading to the implementation of hosepipe bans. Water companies in England and Wales lost more than a trillion litres via leaky pipes last year, according to the sector’s latest figures. The industry and its financial regulator, Ofwat, say the water companies lost an average of 2,923.8m litres of water a day in 2021-22, equating to 1.06tn litres over the year, although Ofwat said the figures remained provisional until it has completed validation checks.

Water industry insiders have blown the whistle on the poor state of the country’s pipe network, arguing that water companies are allowing sewers to crumble, leading to floods, sewage spilling into rivers and sewage leaking into the ground causing health and safety problems.

Martin Salter, the head of policy at the Angling Trust, said: “The available data on wastewater pipe replacement rates shows that the typical replacement/renewal rate in the UK is around 0.05% of the network per annum. This implies Ofwat and the water companies are expecting sewers to last for 2,000 years – 10 times longer than the European average. Our increasing concern in pollution situations like this is that any repairs to an already crumbling network will only last a short while before the next wipeout of fish and wildlife.”

Burst sewage pipes also damage wildlife and rivers, spilling raw effluent into waterways.

Last weekend, a sewage leak suspected to have been caused by faulty pipes at the River Ray near Swindon wiped out fish populations on a three-mile length of the Thames tributary.

An initial investigation by the Environment Agency fisheries team indicates that in the bulk of the river, down to the junction with the main River Thames, there has been an almost total wipeout of fish populations and other invertebrates. More than 2,000 dead fish were counted in the sampling area, including large chub, pike and barbel.

Salter added: “There’s clearly some deep seated problems in the sewerage network around Swindon which should have been resolved years ago. We have sought full incident reports from both Thames Water and the Environment Agency and have instructed solicitors to take whatever action is necessary to secure the funds to restore the river and its wildlife. This would be in addition to any criminal prosecutions which must surely follow such a serious pollution.”

A Thames Water spokesperson said: “Protecting the environment is fundamental to what we do and we are sad to say the pollution caused by a burst pipe near Haydon End sewage pumping station has caused the death of fish in the River Ray. We are working with the Environment Agency to make sure the river returns back to normal as soon as we can.

“The broken sewer pipe has now been repaired and we will soon start to move our tankers, which were deployed so we could remove wastewater while we fixed the pipe, out of the area.

“The pollution from the burst reached as far as the confluence between the River Ray and the River Thames, and we have put aeration cannons into the water to reduce any impact of the pollution. Our environmental scientists have found no evidence that the pollution has caused any environmental damage to the River Thames. They have been carrying out further tests from the River Thames back to the source of the pollution so they can see how the river is recovering.”

Water UK, the trade body representing water companies, has been contacted for comment about pipe replacement.

Viral sensation Jackie Weaver will be seeing if she has what it takes to be the next Prime Minister in a new Channel 4 series.

Jack Peat www.thelondoneconomic.com 

Weaver took the internet by storm in February last year when footage of Handforth Parish Council’s heated Zoom meeting showed her booting out two troublesome council members and being famously told “you have no authority here”.

Now she will join a 12-strong line-up in the new Channel 4 series, Make Me Prime Minister, which will see the candidates showing if they have the mettle to lead the nation and battle it out to see if they have “what it takes to operate in the cut-throat world of politics”.

After trending on Twitter and becoming one of the most popular memes of 2021, Weaver has since released a book and been a guest on television shows including Channel 4’s Big Fat Quiz Of The Year 2021.

Speaking about the upcoming series, Weaver said if she was victorious she would “make decisions that people don’t like”, and believes that “national politics should not involve the rough and tumble that it currently does”.

She would also like to “focus funding away from central government and towards local government so that changes you care about can be made”.

Former prime ministers Sir Tony Blair and David Cameron will also appear in the six-part series, which is due to air later this year on Channel 4.

“Candid and personal advice”

Sir Tony and Cameron have both offered their “candid and personal advice” on what it is like to be prime minister and have also given advice to the candidates in the series, Channel 4 said.

With views across the political spectrum, the 12 “ordinary yet opinionated Brits” will be followed on the campaign trail in the programme, as they are put through their paces in a series of “prime ministerial-style tasks designed to test their leadership skills, resilience, and integrity”.

Weekly group challenges will be set and judged by Alastair Campbell, who was Sir Tony’s former press secretary, and Baroness Sayeeda Warsi, former co-chairwoman of the Conservative Party and a member of the House of Lords.

In order to remain on the campaign trail and make it through the weekly vote, candidates will need to persuade and convince former politicians, experienced journalists and the British public, that they have the charisma, vision and political acumen to lead.

Throughout the course of the series the candidates will be whittled down until one is crowned Channel 4’s Alternative Prime Minister.

Another Conservative Con, just gaseous rhetoric:

“ ..one final ingredient, the most important factor in levelling up, the yeast that lifts the whole mattress of dough…”! – Owl

www.theguardian.com 

Although the House of Commons is not sitting over the summer, MPs who chair select committees are still doing some work and some of them have been sending out letters. Clive Betts, the Labour MP who chairs the levelling up committee, says that when Greg Clark replaced Michael Gove as levelling up secretary in July, he asked Betts to tell him over the summer what the committee thought of the levelling up and regeneration bill.

Not much seems to be the answer. Today Betts has released the letter he has sent to Clark on behalf of his committee giving an assessment of the bill and here is the key paragraph.

It is the committee’s view that the main tool to achieve levelling up will be through appropriate funding to those areas that need it most. This funding will help in making progress on the levelling up missions related to public transport and local connectivity; transforming digital connectivity; improving education outcomes; increasing the number of adults who complete high quality skills training; and increasing healthy life expectancy. None of the provisions in the bill will directly contribute to making progress towards achieving these missions – other than setting them. There is also no funding for levelling up associated with the bill.

Like all select committees, this one has a narrow Conservative majority.

And in a statement to journalists Betts said:

In its current form, the bill does little to reassure that levelling up will prove to be more than just a slogan and that we will have meaningful change in local communities across the country. In key areas, it is unclear how the government intends to drive change and they are yet to commit to the spending that is necessary to level up the country.

Our inquiry has focused on the planning provisions in the bill, which can be described as loosely-connected proposals to tinker with the current system, hopefully achieving some improvement. It has been difficult to conduct scrutiny due to a lot of the detail of the provisions having not yet been published.

Tiverton & Honiton MP Richard Foord has called on the Government to spare people from soaring energy bills by cancelling October’s price cap increase, accusing the Conservatives of “stalling in the face of a national emergency”. The plan would save a typical household in East Devon an extra £1,869.88 a year, and a typical household in Mid Devon an extra £1,931.85.

Lewis Clarke www.devonlive.com

The 70 per cent increase in the energy price cap expected to be announced by Ofgem later this month would be cancelled, with the Government instead paying the shortfall to energy suppliers so that they can afford to supply customers at the current rates.

He says this would mean a total estimated saving £173 million off their electricity and gas bills across the two local authorities. £115 million in East Devon and £57 million in Mid Devon respectively. The Liberal Democrats say the estimated £36 billion cost should be met by expanding the windfall tax on oil and gas company profits, and using the Government’s higher-than-expected VAT revenues as a result of soaring inflation.

The party is also calling for more targeted support for vulnerable and low-income households. This would include doubling the Warm Homes Discount to £300 and extending it to all those on Universal Credit and Pension Credit, while investing in insulating fuel poor homes to bring prices down in the long term.

Richard Foord, Liberal Democrat MP for Tiverton and Honiton, said: “People across our part of Devon are already struggling to make ends meet. Many are deeply concerned about how they will cope with the predicted rise in energy bills – which are set to soar by almost 70 per cent.

“This Conservative Government is stalling in the face of a national emergency. Yet again they are neglecting their duty to the country and not doing enough to put money back into people’s pockets, so they can pay their bills. Countless families and pensioners across East and Mid Devon are already struggling. They need help now and cannot afford to wait weeks for a new Conservative leader to act. This is an emergency, and the Government must step in now to help families and pensioners across Devon by cancelling the planned rise in energy bills this October.”

How else can you afford tax cuts? – Owl

The foreign secretary told a leadership hustings hosted by Times Radio in the West Midlands that too much of the government’s £13 billion package to address Covid backlogs and overhaul social care was going into the NHS. “I would spend that money in social care,” she said. “Quite a lot has gone to the NHS. I would give it to local authorities. We have people in beds in the NHS who would be better off in social care. So put that money into social care.”

Extract from: www.thetimes.co.uk 

The chair of the Commons Treasury committee has urged the government’s economic watchdog to produce fiscal forecasts alongside any emergency budget this autumn, after Liz Truss signalled she would try to avoid early scrutiny of her fiscal plans.

Rowena Mason www.theguardian.com 

Mel Stride, the chair of the committee, said the chancellor must ensure that the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) provides its assessment at the same time as the new prime minister makes any big fiscal decisions.

The Tory MP – who is a supporter of Truss’s opponent, Rishi Sunak – said the absence of fiscal forecasts would mean the new prime minister would be “flying blind” without the public being able to see an independent assessment of the government’s balance sheet.

“OBR forecasts provide transparency and reassurance to the markets on the health of the nation’s finances,” he said. “As a committee, we expect the Treasury to be supporting and enabling the OBR to publish an independent forecast at the time of any significant fiscal event, especially where, unlike other recent fiscal interventions, this might include significant permanent tax cuts.

“Whether such an event is actually called a budget or not is immaterial. The reassurance of independent forecasting is vital in these economically turbulent times. To bring in significant tax cuts without a forecast would be ill-advised.”

It was reported over the weekend that Truss had downgraded her emergency budget planned for mid-September to a more minor fiscal event to bring in tax cuts and set out her wider economic outlook. It would therefore not necessitate full OBR forecasts about the state of the economy.

However, with inflation expected by Citi to reach 18%, and energy bills forecast to top £6,000 annually next year, according to Auxilione, there are worries among some experts that the next prime minister will be basing decisions on out-of-date advice if there is no new information from the OBR.

Stride asked the chancellor, Nadhim Zahawi, to ensure the OBR was preparing forecasts of the UK’s fiscal position already, as the government usually gave it 10 weeks’ notice of a fiscal event, such as a budget.

The committee did not mention Truss’s campaign specifically. However, Stride told LBC: “At the moment the Liz camp are saying, I believe, that there will not be any OBR forecast produced at that time and that is kind of like flying blind.”

Sunak’s campaign has repeatedly called on Truss to “come clean” about how her proposed tax cuts, including reversing the rise in national insurance, will be funded and claimed her plans to borrow in order to fund tax cuts are “dangerous”.

He told the BBC: “Liz’s plans are promising the earth to everybody. I don’t think you can have your cake and eat it. I don’t think life is that simple, and I think her plan risks making everything worse.”

Truss has argued that tax cuts will help to grow the UK’s economy and boost prosperity.

A Truss campaign spokesperson said: “The cost of living crisis means immediate action is required. A Truss government would seek to act as soon as possible to help people across the UK, by cutting taxes and introducing a temporary moratorium on energy levies.”

Winslade Park proposals

From an East Devon Correspondent: 

Illusionists, tricksters and pickpockets are adept at using diversionary tactics to steal your prize possessions from right under your noses, by focusing your attention on the influencing hand, that purports to offer a gift of a flowering bloom, whilst the other surreptitious hand threatens and steals your valuable watch from your wrist and lifts your hard-earned money from your wallet or purse – whilst you watch on intently! 

Similar tactics are employed by property developers and a case in point is this week’s submission by Burrington’s for further amendments to their incongruous Zone D proposals at Winslade Park, Clyst St Mary to erect three, monstrous blocks containing 40 x 4.5-storey sky-high flats (Application 21/2217/MRES) in a low-density, rural, historic village with no local housing need. 

The new amendments focus on providing improved environmental green spaces between Blocks B and C with the loss of a podium feature and additional tree, hedge planting softworks – but crucially the amendments continue to  ignore ‘the elephant in the room’, that has received numerous objections, which is the inappropriate high-density, overall massing and height of 40 towering apartments.  These flats will encroach above and through the existing deciduous, TPO protected woodland, will harm an environmentally-diverse habitat, exacerbate flooding with increased ground levels, damage the amenities enjoyed by existing residents, (whose lives and homes will be negatively impacted visually and by noise and light pollution from these towering multiple-occupancy homes), resulting in significant losses of privacy from overlooking into existing indoor and outdoor private spaces from the numerous proposed living area apartment windows, the elevated gardens, the access road adjoining garden boundaries and (ultimately to add a final blow) – the sky-high 4.5-storey luxury penthouses with 360 degree balconies! 

Outline permission was granted in December 2020, under a hybrid application, which also incorporated re-use of the redundant insurance offices complex and a further 39 homes on a green field site (which was contrary to the Bishops Clyst Neighbourhood and EDDC’s current Local Development Plans to 2031, with Burrington’s pleading failure of the entire overall masterplan through financial viability issues without guarantees for residential approval on this valued, local green field). 

At this outline approval meeting, EDDC Planners recommended a lowering of the indicative height of the Zone D flats’ from three storeys to two storeys, with meaningful consultation with the community to achieve suitable, compatible designs – but both recommendations have been ignored and the Reserved Matters application continues to propose very conspicuous, towering 4.5 storeys with increased ground levels to avoid flooding to the proposed lower flats in this vulnerable area. 

It has also become glaringly obvious that DCC Highways have failed to ensure a solution to a dangerous pedestrian route,  via Winslade Park Avenue, which will be walked by thousands of pedestrian users of these commercial and residential areas to access the local amenities of the primary school, childcare nursery, shop, post office, village hall, play-park, garage and pub, with vulnerable pedestrians having to negotiate a blind bend when walking along this busy, narrow road, without pavements or lighting! These issues have been highlighted to DCC Highways and EDDC Planners – but to date are unresolved, leaving a serious accident or worse inevitable with this increased use. 

We have all been weakened by a life-threatening global pandemic, by adverse repercussions from Brexit, by a war in Europe, causing energy and food crises and by rising inflation – so it is more difficult, at this time, for us all to focus on developmental issues, leaving us more gullible. However, decision makers have been appointed to represent their local communities and must focus on the key, central detrimental issues of this Zone D development and not be side-tracked by offers relating to the minutiae within the application.  We must all look to enhance our communities – not damage them for the future.  Smoke and mirrors trickery will try to disguise the predominant problems of such developmental intensity and the urbanisation of a rural East Devon village. 

Beware of the hidden hand that you fail to watch when concentrating on the gift-bearing one – the former hand will strike and deliver the destructive blow through sleight of hand and property developers have plenty of tricks up their sleeves in their arsenal to achieve maximum profits from development of land – we must all be up to speed and watchful if we value and wish to protect our East Devon communities for future generations. 

Administrators dealing with the fall of South West construction leviathan Midas have sent a report to the Government which could lead to its directors being disqualified. Global business consultancy Teneo Financial Advisory Ltd is also encouraging people owed money to report any concerns they have about events leading to Exeter-headquartered Midas going bust.

William Telford www.devonlive.com

London-based Teneo has confirmed it has sent a confidential report to the Insolvency Service which will look at whether action should be taken against Midas board members. Midas Group Ltd and its subsidiaries collapsed into administration in February 2022 with estimated debts of at least £70m. Midas was involved in huge construction projects across the South West and companies owed cash include several in Plymouth.

The Insolvency Service, a Government agency, has civil powers to consider complaints about the conduct of directors of companies that have entered into formal insolvency proceedings, including administration. It can order that people be disqualified from acting as company directors.

Administrators must report on the conduct of directors under the Company Directors Disqualification Act 1986. Teneo has said it has prepared a confidential report on the conduct of Midas directors in the three years leading up to its appointment as administrators. At the time of entering administration, Midas directors included Stephen Hindley, Alan Hope and Peter Skoulding.

A Teneo spokesperson said: “This report has been provided to the Insolvency Service and will be used in their assessment of whether any action should be taken against the directors, for example, disqualification.”

However, Teneo clarified that the administrators’ report to the Insolvency Service is confidential and neither its contents nor the administrators’ conclusions will be reproduced in any progress reports to creditors.

But Teneo said that In addition, it is also required to consider whether there is any action that could be taken against directors and other organisations, including auditors, that would result in recoveries of cash for the administration estate. The spokesperson said: “This assessment is ongoing and the administrators will report in their progress reports if any actions are commenced/proposed.”

Teneo also said it is also encouraging any of Midas’s creditors to contact the administrators should they have “any concerns regarding the conduct of the company in the period prior to the administrators’ appointment.”

It is also working to recover cash owed to Midas before it went under, including for work in progress. Teneo said: “The administrators will report on recoveries achieved during the course of the administration. However, we note that collection of contractual debts in an insolvency process often leads to substantially lower recoveries than book value, particularly where there is no ongoing business to complete the related contracts.”

Teneo is already dealing with claims from nearly 2,000 creditors, including dozens in Plymouth. Midas Group Ltd and its subsidiaries Midas Construction Ltd, Midas Retail Ltd, Mi-Space (UK) Ltd, Mi-Space Property Services Ltd, Midas Commercial Developments Ltd and Falmouth Developments Ltd all fell into administration in early 2022 blaming a toxic cocktail of Covid, inflation, money owed to them but not paid, and cash flow problems for causing a financial doomsday.

Among many Plymouth firms listed as creditors are Collaton Safety Management, D&L McBride Building Consultancy, EDF Energy, LTC Powered Access, Plymouth Removers, DCA Public Relations, Western Power Distribution, ADS Window Films, All Seasons Group Services, B&C Carpentry, and BPUK Environment.

The two main companies in the Midas family – Midas Group Ltd and Midas Construction Ltd – have realisable assets of just £8,354,644. But when preferential and secured creditors are paid it means there will be a predicted shortfall of £60,290,904 for the hundreds of small firms and individuals in the supply chain.

In addition, Midas’ housing arm Mi-Space (UK) Ltd owes more than £12m with more than £10m of claims unlikely to be paid. This means the overall Midas deficit is now north of £70m.

“And it’s going to spread further and I must level with you, level with the British public, many more families are going to lose loved ones before their time.” Boris Johnson 12 March 2020.

[Deaths involving Covid 180% higher for those aged 85+ and 77% amongst those aged between 75 and 84.]

Carmen Aguilar García www.theguardian.com 

Twice as many deaths involving Covid occurred this summer compared with last summer, according to analysis of new data – though rates have fallen in recent weeks as the latest wave decreases in severity in the UK.

Although the overall number of deaths of people with Covid in 2022 remains far below last year, the summer months have bucked that trend. More than 5,700 Covid deaths have been registered since 8 June when two Omicron subvariants became dominant. This is 95% higher than in the same period last year when there were 2,936 deaths involving Covid across the UK.

However, the latest figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) also indicate that deaths caused by the latest Covid wave – fuelled by the two more transmissible Omicron subvariants, BA.4 and BA.5, which became dominant in early June – are on the wane.

A total of 674 Covid deaths were registered in the UK in the week to 12 August, down from 802 a week earlier and 924 the previous week.

More than twice as many Covid deaths were registered between 1 January and 12 August 2021 as in the same period this year: 65,000 deaths by 12 August 2021 – driven by surging figures caused by the Alpha variant – compared with 28,303 in the same period this year.

Prof Paul Hunter, a professor in medicine at the University of East Anglia, said the “surge in infections associated with the BA.5 wave” is behind the increase in the number of deaths this summer compared with last.

“But we will see fewer deaths in August this year than last,” he added. “I suspect that over the next three months we shall see [that Covid] deaths [are] a lot lower than last year and probably that will remain the case for the entire winter.”

The fact that more people are dying this summer than last is most pronounced in the older age groups, a trend that has been consistent throughout the Covid pandemic. Almost half of the deaths recorded this summer in England and Wales were among people aged 85 and over compared with 27% of the deaths in 2021.

Deaths involving Covid have been the highest among old people throughout the pandemic, but over-85s have recorded the highest increase in the death rate, which is 180% higher this summer than it was in summer 2021.

The number of deaths among those between 75 and 84 has also grown: there were 77% more deaths in this age group this summer compared with last. However, there have been fewer Covid deaths among the under-65s, with the death rate decreasing by about 58% in summer 2022.

Wales and the east and south-west of England recorded the biggest increase in deaths involving Covid with more than three times as many deaths in each of these regions in the summer to date this year compared with the same period in 2021.

In just one region – the north-west – the number of Covid deaths decreased when com pared with the same period last year.

Covid was sixth among leading causes of death in July in England and Wales, the latest ONS monthly analysis of age-standardised mortality rates shows. In July last year, Covid was the ninth-leading cause of death in England and it ranked 22nd in Wales.

The Australian satirists, The Juicemedia, lay into the Conservative administration following news that sewage was being discharged into the sea at a shocking rate.

Shit happens!

Drone photos show ‘incredible’ impact of beavers during drought

A series of remarkable drone shots have revealed how the reintroduction of beavers in Devon has had a hugely beneficial impact on the landscape during the current drought.

Harry Cockburn www.independent.co.uk 

Over 400 years after beavers were hunted to extinction in the UK, the animals were returned to the river Otter in Devon in 2008, and after initial plans for them to be removed, the government consented to a five-year study which highlighted the astonishing improvements to the ecosystem that beavers bring.

Amid the drought and one of the hottest summers on record, some of those benefits are now highly visible, with the land where the beavers are living remaining a lush green, while adjacent land has turned a parched yellow.

The tinder-dry conditions have led to record numbers of wildfires in the UK, but on the Clinton Devon Estates, where a number of beaver families have built dams to create new wetlands, roughly an entire hectare of land remains underwater. Clinton Devon Estates is a land management and property development company which manages the Devonshire estates belonging to Baron Clinton, the largest private landowner in Devon.

“It’s quite incredible to see this area when the conditions have been so challenging in recent weeks,” said Ed Lagdon, a ranger for conservation organisation East Devon Pebblebed Heaths.

“Beavers are very territorial and as the Lower Otter is near full capacity, beaver families will explore nearby tributaries and culverts to find small areas of wetland to settle. They feel safe in water so will seek a water source and that’s likely to be why this family chose this particular area.

“It’s when they come away from the river in this way that they can have more of an impact on their surroundings – they will change the environment around them and manipulate the conditions to suit them. In this location, the beavers have used sticks and mud to create several dams which are now holding back large volumes of water.

Beavers, a keystone species, help birds insects and plants thrive through their wetland creation (Clinton Devon Estates)

He added: “The water is up to two feet in some areas and is fantastic for wildlife such as birds and invertebrates. It also brings flood prevention benefits and carbon capture within the wetland.”

But alongside the many ecological benefits they bring, the land managers said the images also highlight the new challenges beavers can create for people unused to co-existing with the indigenous mammal.

The return of beavers to Devon is having an enormous impact on water retention during the drought (Clinton Devon Estates)

Clinton Devon Estates’ head of agriculture, Sam Briant-Evans, explained: “It’s been quite surprising to see how quickly they’ve worked, it’s taken less than six months. We’ve lost about two hectares of the field as a grazing platform for our dairy herd – one hectare of this is now permanently underwater. It was May this year before we were able to get the cattle onto it.

“The concern we have is if we move them on, they may move upstream again which could cause issues if they are closer to the main farm. It’s a bit of a conundrum for us as an estate as we can see both sides of the equation. We need to accept that the beavers are there but they need to be closely monitored and managed going forward, so their activities and any potential flood issues can be monitored and we can tackle it quickly.

“There’s no clear solution. However, what this does highlight is that with the right management and by working with them, they can help in the adaptation to climate change.”

The positive impact of beavers on the landscape has highlighted the success of numerous reintroductions around the country (Clinton Devon Estates)

New government legislation comes into force on 1 October which will afford beavers legal protection as a recognised native species in England, meaning it will be illegal to disturb, harm or kill them.

John Varley, Clinton Devon Estates director, said: “In the right place, beavers can bring about major benefits for wildlife, the environment and society, including increased biodiversity, which is a key aim of the government’s Nature Recovery Network.

“Clinton Devon Estates supported the River Otter Beaver Trial from the beginning because we wanted to understand the full impact of beavers in a real-world setting. During the project, we learnt a great deal about these benefits, such as cleaner water, natural flood management and habitat creation.

“However, we have also witnessed negative impacts when beavers are in the wrong place: farmers’ fields, private property and roads flooded, as well as trees damaged.

“As the beaver population on the River Otter grew and expanded, so did the need for proactive management, and all the costs associated with that. We believe that if properly funded by government, the cost of managing beavers is far outweighed by the social and economic benefits to nature and the public.”

Tory MP says sewage covered beaches “deters illegal asylum seekers” 

THE SMELL OF SOVEREIGNTY : The Tory MP for Phistit-Phistitgut Reginald Scat has broken ranks with colleagues to laud the redecoration of England’s once pristine beaches.

Titan Searchlight lcdviews.com

While many Cons are expressing disgust at private water companies for doing exactly what they allowed them to do, Scat MP is having none of it.

“It shows how we can boost profits for Blighty’s wealth creators now we’re freed from the shackles of the nanny state EU,” Scat said. ”If we still had ready access to the chemicals we need to clean our waste waters we would not now be blasting our visible sovereignty out of giant pipes along the Sussex coastline. There is no more direct symbol of the throwing off of Brussels than British poo on British beaches.”

Scat, one of the 2019 intake chosen personally by Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings goes on to suggest ”effluent is biodegradable anyway. All these woke eco warriors are perfectly happy to charge you five pounds for a plastic carrier bag but are up in arms over nature’s best, natural fertiliser washing up inshore? There’s a stink of hypocrisy in the movement.”

But sovereignty doesn’t stop with a liberal regulatory approach to waste water.

“Just take a moment to imagine the look on the faces of French fishermen seeking to rob our territorial waters of British fish! They’ll be thinking twice now. And the illegal people who try to reach our shores will be turning back at the first retch of sovereign water.”

Scat is certain to have sympathisers within his party for his views as most are holidaying this year in the Adriatic.

“The only British turd in view there is Boris Johnson. Which is nice. No one need feel homesick with him bobbing about near to shore.”

The Torridge and West Devon constituency of MP Geoffrey Cox has been named Top of the Poops by campaigners fighting to stop raw sewage being discharged into Britain’s waterways.

Guy Henderson www.devonlive.com 

With sewage discharges hot news at the moment thanks to the closure of some of Devon’s top holiday beaches after discharges, the Top of the Poops website has seen a surge in traffic.

The site uses data provided by the Environment Agency and breaks them down by Parliamentary constituency.

Paignton Sands, Preston Sands and Goodrington in Torbay had pollution warnings on Sunday, while last week there were bathing bans at Teignmouth Holcombe and Teignmouth Town beaches. Heavy rain can trigger legally-allowed storm overflows to prevent pipes which carry a mixture of rainwater and sewage from backing up.

The website uses 2021 pollution figures to map at least 470,000 sewage “spills” in England and Wales, incidents in which sewage has been intentionally released into the water.

The figures show that Torridge and West Devon had the most hours of sewage being released into the water in the whole of England, with South West Water carrying out 5,233 sewage “dumps” across nearly 59,000 hours. The Central Devon constituency came next, with 4,320 dumps over 43,506 hours.

Totnes had 4,001 dumps over 27,465 hours and North Devon 2,091 over 21,010 hours. The majority of sewage overflows took place into freshwater rivers. Just one in 27 dumps took place into the sea.

Of those that did happen on beaches, 111 sewage incidents were recorded at Ilfracombe’s Wildersmouth Beach, with 157 at Exmouth, 108 at Combe Martin and 93 at Torquay’s Meadfoot Beach.

The shellfishery on the River Teign in South Devon was the worst affected, with 1,926 sewage incidents, representing 13,640 hours of sewage. The Exe Estuary shellfishery had 1,748 sewage incidents in 2021.

“As with another crisis, that of the private care home sector, lax oversight has been aggravated by the slither of these industries into private equity or the murky world of offshore finance.”

Simon Jenkins http://www.theguardian.com

Where there’s muck there’s brass. But rarely was muck filthier or money more brass-necked than in the case of the brown effluent pouring into the Channel off Seaford, or the green algae spreading over Windermere. The English water industry can make all the excuses it likes, but those who find themselves swimming in sewage tend to notice – and wonder why those responsible deserve million-pound salaries. Last year nine water chiefs pocketed over £15m between them, an annual rise of 27%.

The dumping of sewage into watercourses is caused simply by storage tanks overflowing. This is currently attributed by the industry to hot weather causing unexpectedly fast run-off. This is supposed to happen only exceptionally rarely. Southern Water has reportedly made four such dumps into the Channel in a week. In total 373,000 cases of sewage discharge were reported in 2021, even before this year’s heatwave. Something has gone wrong.

The spread of rationing via hosepipe bans, and the explosion of sewage into rivers and the sea indicates an industry that has lurked too long in the private sector cupboard. Under the Victorians, water was the noble face of municipal socialism. Now it is the unacceptable face of capitalism. The success of privatised industry depends on the effectiveness with which the state regulates its natural monopolies. Under Whitehall’s Ofwat, water regulation has failed. Its most radical suggestion to meet the current crisis appears to be for people to turn off their taps while cleaning their teeth.

Since privatisation in 1989, an estimated £72bn has been allowed to leak from the industry into dividends, money that should clearly have gone into investment, stemming leaks and building overflow tanks. As it is, roughly a quarter of England’s fresh water never reaches the consumer but escapes from unrepaired pipes. Meanwhile contamination means the UK’s swimming sites are so filthy they ranked last in Europe for water quality in 2020. Even the government’s own Environment Agency has called for water company directors to be imprisoned for the appalling decline in performance, after a rise to 62 of what it classed as “serious incidents” of pollution last year. Campaigners are also taking Ofwat to court for regulatory failure. The industry, in every sense, stinks.

The talk now is of renationalisation, though the sight of the water companies walking away with yet more money in compensation would be hard to stomach. The real trouble lies less with privatisation as such than with its regulators. As with another crisis, that of the private care home sector, lax oversight has been aggravated by the slither of these industries into private equity or the murky world of offshore finance.

Here public utility falls by the wayside. Short-term profit is what matters, dividends are all and scandalous salaries generate a revolving door between companies, regulators and Whitehall. The result is that blatant polluters such as the poultry industry are allowed by planners to drain effluent into the River Wye and make it an open sewer. Our water utilities vent our own waste into the sea. And meanwhile a proposal for a national network for transferring water from the plentiful west to the parched east lies dormant. Its cost of £10bn is about a tenth that of Boris Johnson’s vanity project, HS2. A train was considered a greater priority.

The Tory leadership frontrunner, Liz Truss, was responsible for cutting millions of pounds of funding earmarked for tackling water pollution during her time as environment secretary, the Guardian can reveal.

Pippa Crerar www.theguardian.com 

Truss, who was in charge at the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) between 2014 and 2016, oversaw “efficiency” plans set out in the 2015 spending review to reduce Environment Agency funding by £235m.

This included a £24m cut from a government grant for environmental protection, including surveillance of water companies to prevent the dumping of raw sewage, between 2014-15 and 2016-17, according to the National Audit Office.

It represents almost a quarter of the funding cut from this area between 2010, when the grant stood at £120m, and 2020, by which time it had fallen to £40m.

Labour analysis of official figures shows that since 2016 raw sewage discharge in England and Wales has more than doubled, from 14.7 spill events an overflow to 29.3 in 2021. Greenpeace said the figures showed Truss had “sewage on her hands”.

The Environment Agency has called for the government to reverse the cuts but campaigners want the next prime minister to go further and also give the body the power to properly monitor water companies over sewage, rather than allowing them to self-report discharges.

It follows the finding that 24% of sewage overflow pipes at popular seaside resorts in England and Wales have monitors that are faulty or do not have monitors at all, meaning people could be swimming in human waste this summer without realising.

Last year the head of the Environment Agency, James Bevan, called on the government to reinstate the funds, saying that given the length of the country’s river systems, having “only a few hundred people to oversee them is a pretty tall ask”.

He told MPs: “It has had an effect on our capacity to monitor, to enforce the rules and to help improve the environment where we think it needs doing. Honestly, I would like to see that grant restored. I would like to get back to where we were 10 years ago, and I think it would make a massive difference.”

In response to the findings, the shadow environment secretary, Jim McMahon, said: “The country is facing a crisis in our water supply. Our water infrastructure is at bursting point with billions of litres of water being wasted every day and raw sewage being dumped into our waters.

“The fact that Liz Truss was the one to cut the EA so severely not only demonstrates her lack of foresight but also her lack of care for the detail, in recognising the need to adapt to the serious flooding that had just happened on her watch.”

Environment Agency insiders said that after Truss’s cuts, staff were moved away from environmental monitoring towards flood protection, and the number of samples taken from rivers went down dramatically.

Vaughan Lewis, a senior consultant for the agency, told the Guardian: “They plummeted to the point it was impossible for the Environment Agency to know what’s going on. They had no control or monitoring capability that was meaningful. They ceded the control of monitoring to water companies, which ended up being able to mark their own homework. They take their own samples and assess whether they are being compliant.

“We saw that doesn’t work – look what happened with Southern Water, which didn’t declare its pollution incidents and ended up being fined by the EA when they were found out. There are suspicions this could be happening across the board. It has been left to citizen scientists who monitor and fill in the gaps.”

Lewis added: “Lots of this would have happened under Liz Truss; she was there when some of those cuts were made. She was a poor minister and the Environment Agency has been cut to the bone and it can’t monitor or regulate effectively.”

As environment secretary, Truss defended the cuts by saying “there are ways we can make savings as a department”, citing better use of technology and inter-agency working.

She is already facing questions about why she was registered absent from a vote on a Labour amendment in the House of Commons that aimed to place legal obligations on water companies to stop polluting England’s waterways during heavy rainfall.

A spokesperson for Truss said: “These spending reductions were part of a wider drive from central government to find efficiencies across department budgets and government agencies.

“It’s vital we get a grip on pollution in our water and ensure it is clean and safe for all to enjoy. As prime minister, Liz will make sure the necessary action is taken to deliver this.”

Greenpeace UK’s chief scientist, Dr Doug Parr, said: “A decade of budget cuts and government deregulation has left the Environment Agency, almost literally, up shit creek without a paddle. The growing tsunami of sewage unleashed on to Britain’s waterways is a shocking demonstration of how undermining our regulators leads to a disregard for nature and those meant to protect it.

“That our likely future prime minister was an instigator of cuts to the money used to protect our rivers, and so helped cause this environmental catastrophe, doesn’t bode well for the UK’s protection of the natural world. Liz Truss has sewage on her hands.”

Hugo Tagholm, the chief executive of Surfers Against Sewage, said: “Self-monitoring has clearly failed for the water industry, the culture of self-reporting has clearly failed, millions of hours of sewage pollution going into our waterways every year, it’s a failed model.”

Martin Salter, from the Angling Trust, said: “The consequences of these ill-advised cuts to the Environment Agency’s pollution monitoring capabilities are now present for all to see and smell, with raw sewage flowing down our rivers and dead fish and other wildlife washed up on the banks with depressing regularity.

“The move away from tougher regulation in favour of allowing water companies to report on their own failures has created a polluter’s charter, as evidenced by the recent prosecution of Southern Water for deliberately falsifying their discharge data.”

The Environment Agency has long bemoaned its lack of funding and power, underpinned by a lack of ambition from ministers on tackling waste. In 2020 it said it recognised that a “huge gap is opening up between the outcomes we want to achieve and our ability to achieve them”, and estimated that “at the current rate of progress” it would take more than 200 years to reach the government’s target of at least 75% of waters being close to their natural state.

Last night BBC Spotlight featured the latest pollution alert on Budleigh Beach, a full 3 minutes.

Richard Foord MP was interviewed, but Budleigh’s MP, Simon Jupp was absent. (Simon Jupp voted against the Lords amendment that would have placed legal duties on the companies to reduce discharges last October.)

Richard Foord MP, reiterated the Lib Dem research findings that the extent of pollution is not known because the systems supposed to be alerting us are not working effectively. In Devon and Cornwall, one in eight are either faulty or not installed.

Two regular swimmers who stopped swimming last week for four days were not aware of Monday’s surprise alert until the BBC interviewer told them. 

The Government says a plan to tackle sewage overflows will be published “next month”.

From the Environment Agency site (and Safer Seas Service): Bathing not advised today at either Budleigh or Ladram.